2021 PTACC Deflection and Pre-Arrest Diversion Training Summit
The Police, Treatment, and Community Collaborative—the national voice of the field of deflection and pre-arrest diversion—invites you to attend its 2021 Deflection and Pre-Arrest Diversion Training Summit, October 12-15 in Chicago, Illinois.
The emerging field of deflection and pre-arrest diversion provides an opportunity for public safety practitioners to collaborate with the public health system to create community-based pathways to treatment and services for people with substance use disorders (SUDs), mental health disorders (MHDs), or both, and who often have other service needs, without entry into the justice system.
This summit—the only one of its kind—will provide the opportunity for individuals, teams, organizations, and community leaders to come together through cross-sector collaboration to learn about, develop, and enhance deflection and pre-arrest diversion initiatives that best address the needs of their communities.
Given the record number of lives lost to overdoses over the last year and the danger to people with mental illness during encounters with law enforcement, there has never been a more essential time for first responders, behavioral health, and the community to work together to ensure access to treatment and services for people with SUDs and MHDs.
Summit Goals
This summit has two major goals. The first is to provide information on topics of importance regarding deflection and pre-arrest diversion through plenary sessions and over 25 breakout and workshop sessions to equip individuals and teams with concrete practical knowledge and solutions they can take back to their jurisdictions. Topics will include (but not be limited to) integration of multiple systems to create community-based interventions; how to make deflection initiatives sustainable; outreach to and engagement with different communities, including communities of color, the recovery community, the faith community, and the business community; how to get officer buy-in for deflection programs; and how to work toward inclusion and equity in both the justice and health systems. New topics this year will include community responder programs and fire/EMS-led diversion programs.
The second goal of the summit is to train multi-disciplinary teams from city, county, and tribal jurisdictions that want to start or enhance deflection or pre-arrest diversion programs. The PTACC Summit brings together practitioners from public safety (law enforcement, fire, and EMS), behavioral health, treatment, social services, community advocacy, public policy, and research to provide training on how to launch or enhance a deflection program that can help to reduce overdose deaths, steer people with substance use disorders or mental illness into treatment and reduce the collateral consequences that can result from entering the justice system. On the second full day of the summit (Thursday, October 14), while the summit continues for other attendees, these teams will start facilitated action planning that will lead to the development of individually tailored programs for their jurisdictions.
Who Should Attend
This summit is for individuals and teams who work in deflection and pre-arrest diversion and want to better understand issues and topics related to this emerging field, or community leaders who want to create collaborative public health solutions to public safety problems being faced by their communities.
Registration Fees & Hotel Information
For registration fees and summit policy information, visit the registration fees page. For cost and room reservation information at the Renaissance Chicago Downtown Hotel, visit the hotel page.
Below you’ll find more information on PTACC’s mission and history, as well as information on deflection and pre-arrest diversion.
- To learn more about PTACC, click here.
- To view PTACC’s visual of the five deflection pathways, click here.
- For more information on deflection and pre-arrest diversion, click here.